Very Fun & Challenging Deity Map

Intro:
Some of you already know me, as an Immortal noob who has yet to beat his first deity game. I've asked for advice a couple of times already.
This time, it's a little bit different, though. This map is definitely way out of my abilities to beat the game. I'm only gonna play this because I really like the composition of the opponents and the territory. Although it's not the best territory, it makes for a decent enough game. I'm certain, I could win on Immortal easily. Deity, though, no way...
So this is gonna be a series with a good mix of learning and fun. I'm gonna ask for advice very frequently and very specifically here and also do a lot of saving and loading to get this game perfectly. For those of you who enjoy this kind of thing, consider this as a joint effort to win a tough and fun map with an Immortal player as an executioner. So keep in mind, I'm not gonna be making optimal micro decisions. The strategy part will be worked out together with you guys.


Map and leader Info:
Deity, Fractal, Medium Size, Normal Speed, No huts & events


Willem van Orange




The Start
Now once I saw this start, I was ready to hit the regenerate button. Then I moved the warrior 1S1E and got this first impression reiterated. But I figured, there's no harm in moving on top of the sugar and voilà... the start began to catch my interest.






General Strategy
With a strong financial leader like Willy, I'm always gonna look to make a strong commere capital. This one isn't exactly a monster due to mediocre food but it's not horrible either.
As is required on Deity, I'm gonna choose to rapidly expand towards the AI and landblock as much as possible. Then tech up to Aesthetics, trade for Alpha and everything else and then backfill the rest of my land.
Of course I will try to grab a strategic resource early to defend against barbs and all of this good stuff...


My first Attempt


So now I'm gonna take a second shot at it and post the early gam results.

Tough map, given the start and neighbors.

Normally I'd suggest Elepulting in a situation like this. But Charlie is Protective and Shaka builds a ton of Impi, which makes both targets tougher than usual. Not impossible... just tougher.

If you have a large amount of space in which to expand, it may be worth gifting a city to Shaka and switching into Charlie's religion to keep them happy. Shaka is, at least, easy to manipulate. And Charlie is a zealot.

Maybe you could try to self-tech Alphabet, to bribe Shaka in against someone?

Clams, forests and PHs to the south-west, desert to the south...

Tech Path
Mining, BW (popped no copper), AH, TW, Hunting, Pottery, Writing, Aesthetics


Build Order
Worker first (12 turns), warrior, warrior, warrior, chopped and/or whipped settler, worker,...


Worker Moves
farm sugar, farm FPs, chop forest 1N

I might leave out hunting, as I did in my first run, but the ivory is the only luxury resource so I really wanna get it... mistake?

The Opposition and the expanding
Shaka from the west on turn 7, Charly from the north on turn 8, Stalin from the east on turn 9, Hatchet from the north on turn 13.


Now usually I'm switching into Slavery right away, as I will do right now. Since the land is least developed, I lose the minimum during the revolution and I am always gonna need to whip early. Anything that speaks against that?

Also we can see that Charly is really close and has settled his 2nd city due north. But the surrounding makes for a decent ability to utilize lots of good helper cities.




Now I'm gonna go AH here for two reasons:
a) the PC is the only workable source of hammers early for the capital
b) I have not popped copper and hope for horses

Should I instead go straight for Hunting and Archery?


The surrounding

Doshin said:

Tough map, given the start and neighbors.

Normally I'd suggest Elepulting in a situation like this. But Charlie is Protective and Shaka builds a ton of Impi, which makes both targets tougher than usual. Not impossible... just tougher.

If you have a large amount of space in which to expand, it may be worth gifting a city to Shaka and switching into Charlie's religion to keep them happy. Shaka is, at least, easy to manipulate. And Charlie is a zealot.

Maybe you could try to self-tech Alphabet, to bribe Shaka in against someone?

Click to expand...

certainly interestind and also new to me what you are suggesting... dealing with shaka was actually the first banana skin in my first attempt. (and it also broke my neck, he went straight at me with only charly on judasim. but I believe charly switched over to juda only after shaka had already started plotting on me

Agreed with Doshin. Also, imo the map is pretty poor. I opened it up and played a few turns. You've got jungle to the north and immediate east and on the flip you have desert to the south and immediate east.

In additional, your Capital has very poor production and not that much food to whip so you should have just SIP which lets you farm the sugar, FP, and pasture the cows for a +7F surplus with 2F from Capital. And once your Capital became bigger it has potential to work +18 3 hills, cows, and phants.

Also, by settling on the sugar you could very easily lose some workable tiles with jungle growing in on ya. SIP also gets you 14 forest to chop.....and imo you should beeline Math > Construction from 3 cities..maybe even 2, and go stomp.

what exactly? not to elepult rush? to self-tech alpha?

would you say my starting choice is that much inferior that i should definitely reload? i got the much better cottage cap than the SiP location... you think the jungle cities - even tho they are primarily supporter cities - will develop too slowly and encumber me too much to win a lib race?

From the start I would go hunting -> AH

farm the sugar ( NOT the flood plain ). Then improve the ivory + cow.

Then if no horses in reach I would go archery

Then wheel -> pottery

Lay down some river cottages.

Then BW

This insures good commerce from the start

interesting... where do you settle AZ? delaying BW so much makes me feel uncomfortable, tho, with two close AIs and one of them imperialistic! i dont mean to argue with a player of your calibre but doest this jeopardize our number of cities spot a lot?!

I'd settle on the sugar just like you did, no problem there.

Really if a deity surprise AI attacks you around 2000 BC then it's probably game over no matter what, even if you survive the initial onslaught then you'll be stunted so bad you probably won't recover. So getting to copper a little faster is not going to make much a difference.

The idea going hunting -> AH first is to possibly unlock horses and give you a strong production tile ( cows ) and a +3 commerce tile ( ivory ) which should get you a pretty fast pottery, then BW is very quick after that.

Just teching BW without any good commerce base is the worse way to do it IMO, unless you're doing some kind of axe rush ( which... you shouldn't be ). The only reason I would do it is if I didn't have at least 2+ river tiles to cottage, you have 3, so there is no hurry.

oh reaally?! i thought the mining => BW opening is the strongest default opening out there since chopping and whipping will speed up the expansion rate so much. i thought early land grabs are key to deity maps or is this only true for cramped pangae starts?

You're going to get early BW so you can chop out a bunch of settlers and grab... what? There's nothing to grab early except the fish and the wheat, which are not in danger of being taken before you can get there normally.

It's not hard to get 3 early cities without chopping anything, and really that's about as many as you'd want to get before you got a solid commerce base, any more then that and you'd just crash your tech rate.

*EDIT*

Here is my early play with hunting -> AH, no trouble getting the second site. Horses hooked up about 2500 BC which is just in time and maybe a little risky, however worked out fine on this map.

well i figured it was worth getting the jungle cities i settled in my screenies to help support the cottages early for the capitol... the way youre doing it, you arent setting yourself up for a lib race exactly, are you? (not that im saying that one definitely should do that) what is your long-term plan or is it too early to tell?

thanks by the way for continuously helping me out in my advice threads i appreciate it

AZ tells you the correct tech path, and settling as always. There are enough tiles to cottage, or improve with out having BW that it should not be your first tech. Best rule of thumb for teching is Food > AntiBarb > Commerce > Hammers. As for settling you should ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS settle your second city for anti barb. Otherwise Deity barbs will kick your butt.

pepe26 said:

well i figured it was worth getting the jungle cities i settled in my screenies to help support the cottages early for the capitol... the way youre doing it, you arent setting yourself up for a lib race exactly, are you? (not that im saying that one definitely should do that) what is your long-term plan or is it too early to tell?

thanks by the way for continuously helping me out in my advice threads i appreciate it

Click to expand...

No, those jungle cities are not worth the trouble, and I'm not sure you could get them even with early chopping anyway. Maybe if there were a ton of gem mines or something...

From where I am in my screen shot grabbing 5+ cities should not be a problem. They won't all be great, but it could certainly get me to lib. The capitol is not too bad even before calendar.

And I have ivory, and that means I can take charlies land pretty easy.

The way I would play this is to tech toward elephants with an eye on charly, since even though I could win lib from my position, I'd much rather have better land first. By the time I get elephants charly should have cleared the jungle for me.

If for some reason charly gets out of reach ( early engineering ) then I am still in a decent position to go for lib, or attack someone else.


*EDIT*

LOL, well it turns out Shaka had other plans for me. I didn't notice it until a little late because I don't have bug installed on this computer ( no red fist warning ).



Not the end of the game, especially if you had the early warning from BUG. Whipping archers and teching to elephants should beat him back. Still a little annoying he had to pick me as apposed to the other yellow jerk.

My god! I just tried your starting strategy and it was soooo much superior to mine... I guess that was a major leak of mine to rush out BW per default so much... I did have a littl trouble with the barbies, though, and admittedly had to reload a couple of times :/

Heres the screenie of 875 BC with 5 citis and no room for any more unfortunately... Aztecs were plotting on someone and I'm pretty sure its me. All of a sudden, Charly declared on me with no red fist. Did he react in such a manner because I settled Nijmegen right in his face? He couldnt have been bribed in on me because nobody has gotten to Alpha yet -.-

There goes my third try down the drain... I'm starting to think, this map ain't as much fun as I thought it would be...

I played this one a bit.
Until 325BC:

ive ever been able to to pull off a HA rush on deity... well done

Well, I really played without real sense of micro, no solid strategy, neighbours were too generous to me. Worst type of rush and perhaps worst target; super late rush. Oops longbows, I knew that was gonna to happen to me. Bribe against me; I knew that was gonna happen onto me. I just needed some game to play...I didn't play for weeks...

Anyways, I just intended to have fun, that was this game is supposed to offer, right?

In a serious play, elepult or lib is far better.

Don't forget the tomatoes.

Longbows ==> (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ ┻━┻
Analysis: Prolly this religious lovefest was my bad luck and that did help the AI to tech faster...I mean trade more.

EDIT: Ohhh, PeteJ is there.

pepe26 said:

Heres the screenie of 875 BC with 5 citis and no room for any more unfortunately... Aztecs were plotting on someone and I'm pretty sure its me. All of a sudden, Charly declared on me with no red fist. Did he react in such a manner because I settled Nijmegen right in his face? He couldnt have been bribed in on me because nobody has gotten to Alpha yet -.-

Click to expand...

Charlemagne: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11931700&postcount=11

Kaitzilla said:

Shared Religion Bonus - Up to +7 Relations (or +8 if Charlemagne owns the Holy City)

Declares Wars of Conquest on Neighbors whom He is Annoyed With 7/10

Flavor Military (Medium) + Religion (Low)

Can plot war at pleased: Nope

Can be bribed to war against AI: Pleased (If he is cautious or lower with target AI)

Click to expand...

In other words, Charlie will only ever declare war at Cautious, but at Cautious he will declare quite often. He is a zealot (only Zara and Isabella value religion more highly, I think). So switch into his religion and tread carefully until the diplo points stack up.

Settling in his face probably led to a close borders penalty, and since you were weak and a land target, he decided to attack. Later in the game, other diplo bonuses (trade relations, prolonged peace, accumulated religious brownie points, and so on) will be more than enough to counter any close border tensions.

Very slow progress on this game. Mostly updating to keep this thread from dying.
50 BC: